Corned Gizzards Confit

Giblets are probably the least-used parts of the ducks and geese we bring home, and this is a shame. Even many who happily eat chicken or turkey giblets at the holidays, or as a bar snack, wrinkle their noses at eating the heart, liver and gizzard of their wild birds. I have no idea why this is, because it sure ain’t because of flavor.

Allow me to give you an iron-clad, no-fail recipe for gizzards that will turn haters into lovers.

I’m talking about corned gizzards. Yep. Corned, as in corned beef. A simple brine followed by a simple bath in a crockpot will turn out some of the finest meat in the waterfowl world. The flavor is virtually identical to corned beef, and you can control the normally crunchy texture of the gizzard by how long you cook them.

This is my favorite way to eat duck or goose gizzards. Sliced thin and tossed with a simple saute of wild mushrooms, a bitter greens salad, or with sauerkraut and German spätzle — it’s a really killer dish!

Cleaning a gizzard is easy. Technically, a gizzard is a muscular stomach: Two half-moons of meat powering a nasty, leathery sack full of grit. The bird uses those muscles and that grit to grind things like fibrous plants and tough seeds. You don’t eat the sack and the grit, of course. You slice the two lobes of meat off each end of the gizzard and call it a day. You don’t need to ever see the inside of the sack at all.

It’s as easy as I just made it out to be. Take a short, sharp knife (a penknife is perfect) and look at the gizzard: Slice what’s obviously meat away from the gushy stuff at the center. The more you do, the closer to the edge you can get, and the more meat you will come away with.

I like to slip the tip of the knife under that silverskin on the sides of the meat to remove it, but in this preparation you don’t even need to do that. You can clean a gizzard in literally 10 seconds.

Which birds to use? All geese, some of which can have gizzards that weigh a half-pound or more, and big ducks like mallards, canvasbacks, redheads, gadwall and pintail. Interestingly, coots have giant gizzards for their size – about the same size as a mallard’s – so if you shoot coots take the gizzards; that’s a Cajun tip, by the way. (Ditto for pukekos, if you happen to live in New Zealand.)

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

Once you have your cleaned gizzards, you brine them like corned beef in the fridge for a day, then put them in a crockpot with some broth and maybe a bay leaf or two, turn it on and walk away. You can eat them as little as 6 hours later, but the real magic happens a day later.

Yep, you heard right: If you crockpot the gizzards for a full 24 hours, they come out looking exactly like corned beef and so tender you can squash them with a fork.

Everything in here is pretty easy to find, with the possible exception of the pink curing salt. I buy mine in bulk online, but any butcher shop will have it, as will anyplace that makes its own smoked sausages. You can also use Morton’s Tenderquick in a pinch; follow that product’s instructions for corned beef to know how much of the stuff you should use. You can also skip the curing salt altogether, but the gizzards will not be that pretty rosy color.

Course: Appetizer

Cuisine: American

Serves: 8people

Author: Hank Shaw

Ingredients

1poundcleaned gizzards

¼cupkosher salt

½teaspooncuring salt(Instacure No. 1)

1quartchicken or duck broth

2bay leaves

Instructions

Dissolve the salt and curing salt in 1 quart of water. Submerge the gizzards and let them brine in the fridge for at least 6 hours, and up to 12. The longer they stay in the brine, the saltier they will get. I like to do this before I go to bed, and then start the cooking before work the next morning.

When you are ready to cook, remove the gizzards from the brine and discard the brine. Put the gizzards in a crockpot and cover with the broth. Add water if they are not completely submerged. Add the bay leaves and set the crockpot to high. My crockpot will never hit a simmer even at high, and this is what you want: So set your slow cooker at whatever setting will be nice and hot, but not simmering. Cook the gizzards for at least 6 hours (they’ll still be crunchy though), and as many as 24 hours if you want silky, tender meat.

Once the gizzards are corned, they will keep up to 2 weeks in the fridge, so long as you keep them in the broth you cooked them in.

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Comments

The Crockpot really isn’t the best solution. Most slow cookers actually get to the same temperature whether you select low or high. The difference is that low takes longer to get to that temperature. If you want to use your slow cooker, you really need to know the temperature your cooker gets to. What I do is put the thing on low and let it go for a few hours with the lid off and then take the temp of the water. Then put the lid on for a couple hours and take the temp again. Repeat that process with the cooker set to high. Finally, test how hot it gets with the lid on and off with the cooker set to warm.

I actually do all my confit in the slow cooker, but I have a PID to control the temperature.

Thank you for the wonderful recipe. We are small flock producers and I hate to see any part of our wonderful pastured birds go to waste. My first thought, like Tamra, was that a slow cooker might do the job, however I’ll be sure to check the temps first. My oven has a keep warm option at 170 degrees farenheit. An oven poach might work for the sous-vide stage. What are your thoughts on that?